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- Debate continues on whether the current NASCAR playoff system is fair after Joey Logano’s 2024 championship win.
- NASCAR is currently reviewing potential adjustments to the playoff system, but changes are unlikely to drastically alter the current format.
If Matt Kenseth killed the old championship system, did Joey Logano kill the current method?
Are both true? Is neither true? Or is the answer somewhere between those two extremes?
Answers: Doubtful. Probably not. Yeah, sounds about right.
Such things are being hashed out publicly this week, and among those weighing in is one of the very best NASCAR racers who just so happened to never win a championship: Hall of Famer Mark Martin, who, by the way, was seemingly and inadvertently dragged into this argument by America’s Crew Chief.
We’ll explain, but first, some history.
Mild Matty K in 2003: One win, one championship
The “old way” of crowning a champion ended after Matt Kenseth won the 2003 championship. Mild Matt was a picture of consistency that year, but he wasn’t consistently at the front of the field. In fact, he won just one race.
Didn’t matter, because the championship was determined by season-long points gathering, with the only bonuses being a one-time five-pointer for leading a lap, and another five if you led the most laps in the race — 10 extra points available in each race, where the winner received 175, which was actually 180 because by winning he obviously led at least one lap.
Each race runner-up back then got 170 points, and if you’re looking for you’re looking for a big glitch in the old system, it’s this: Take those 170 points, add five for leading a lap and five more leading the most laps, and yep, the second-place driver would earn just as many points as the winner. You could win the Daytona 500 and go to Week 2 without the points lead.
Weird but true.
Still with us?
That long-ago formula was how Dale Earnhardt won seven championships. It’s how Richard Petty won seven before that, though the method of collecting season-long points changed midway through King Richard’s reign.
NASCAR first went playoff racin’ in 2004
NASCAR had been tinkering with ideas for a postseason when presented with the perfect time to strike: Right after Matt Kenseth’s one-win 2003 championship season (that one victory came at Vegas, by the way).
Kurt Busch was the first champ crowned after a postseason, which began as a 10-race mini-season, where the playoff driver who gathered the most points during that span was considered the champ.
In the years following, the playoffs were tweaked, tweaked and tweaked again, and eventually they landed on the system in place for the past 11 years — 16 drivers whittled to 12 after three playoff races, to eight after three more, to a final four after three more, with the 10th and final playoff race being a winner-take-all among those four.
Generally speaking, the eventual champ had put together a good all-around season, followed by a steady-to-great playoffs.
Then came Joey Logano in 2024.
Joey Logano’s lucky (and timely) 2024 championship run
Logano was 15th in points after the regular season, but was in no danger of missing the 16-driver playoffs because he’d earned automatic entry with a Week 19 win at Nashville. Though a two-time champ, he slid into the playoffs without much fanfare, but then he won the first playoff race, at Atlanta, to secure a Round of 12 berth.
Logano barely missed transferring from the Round of 12 to the Round of 8, however …
… He advanced from ninth place to the Round of 8 when Alex Bowman’s car was DQ’d following post-race inspections at Charlotte.
Joey not only survived, but wouldn’t you know it, he opened the Round of 8 with a win at Las Vegas, and after finishes of 28th and 10th the next two weeks, he clutched up and won the final at Phoenix for championship number three.
He got hot at the right time, lucky at the right time, then hot again at the right time. It doesn’t often work out in that fashion, but it can, and some aren’t crazy about it, which leads us to Mark Martin.
Larry Mac vs. Mark Martin? Not really
Martin keeps pretty active on social media, and he’s not shy about preaching the virtues of the old season-long championship battle, even though the Cup title was often clinched prior to the final weekend. Hell, sometimes two weeks prior.
Like Phil Mickelson at the U.S. Open, Martin famously finished second in the Cup standings five times. He raced for championships under the old system and under the original playoff method, but never under today’s system.
Martin joined the current discussion because some fans thought he was being called out — unfavorably, they felt — by longtime crew chief-turned-broadcaster Larry McReynolds, who co-hosts a NASCAR show on SiriusXM satellite radio.
Danielle Trotta, his co-host, suggested a racer on the current playoff subcommittee (they’re examining potential ways to tweak the modern system) badly wants to go back to the pre-2004 ways.
“I bet it’s a driver that’s not won a championship,” Larry Mac said to Trotta.
Uh-oh. Chances are, he was speaking of Denny Hamlin, but some knee-jerk reactors thought he was taking a shot at Mark Martin, which would’ve been an extremely weird thing to do in this case, but knee-jerk reactions, by definition, don’t come with a lot of thought.
So the knee-jerkers did what they often do, they went on X to rat out Larry Mac — and rat him out directly to Mark Martin, who didn’t really take the bait but did reiterate his love of the old ways.
What does the 2023 NASCAR champ have to say about all this?
Next up: Ryan Blaney, the 2023 champ who seems to fall somewhere in the middle of this argument.
Also speaking on SiriusXM this week, Blaney said he favors the original playoff format, back when just 10 drivers made the postseason and, once there, reset the standings and raced for points over the entire 10-race playoff. That’s back when it was called the “Chase for the Championship” by most but officially known as the Chase for the Nextel Cup.
“Do I have my ideal championship format? Yeah,” Blaney said. “I was a huge fan of the initial Chase. Last 10 weeks of the year, you kind of have somewhat of a reset in points and then you go 10 races and whoever had the best 10 races was going to win the championship.”
Solid idea, but two problems.
First, don’t bet on NASCAR shrinking the playoff field from 16, and certainly not all the way back to 10. More playoff cars, more playoff exposure for the sponsors who largely fund horsepower.
And they won’t likely return to a 10-race points chase that could see the leader go into the final weekend needing nothing more, say, than a 25th-place finish to clinch the Cup.
Right now, it’s all theory, but when the smoke clears, here’s a certainty: Whether things stay the same, return to yesteryear or fall somewhere in between, some people won’t like it.
— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
